


Scourge of the Sea

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Series: Alternian Nights [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Accidents, Backstory, Drowning, Female Friendship, Friendship, Gen, Huddling For Warmth, Hurt/Comfort, Ocean, Pre-Sgrub, Sailing, cotton candy bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-26
Updated: 2012-09-26
Packaged: 2017-11-15 02:01:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/521941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vriska tries to teach herself to sail.  Terezi waits on shore for the inevitable disaster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scourge of the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written for [Cotton Candy Bingo](http://cottoncandy-bingo.dreamwidth.org/1660.html) in response to the prompt: _lending a coat in the cold_.
> 
> Because Vriska had to learn sailing at some point -- she was clearly comfortable on ships when she and Eridan were Flarp partners, and if nothing else she would have jumped at yet another way to imitate Mindfang -- but I sincerely doubt she would have wanted to learn from _Eridan_. A teaching relationship would give him far too much implicit power over her. Terezi, on the other hand... while that relationship was clearly competitive, it was also more collaborative. I think Vriska might have been (reluctantly) willing to be vulnerable in her Scourge Sister's company. And before the Team Charge debacle, I don't think Terezi would have taken advantage.

"You're going to capsize. And then I will laugh at you," Terezi pronounces.

Vriska hisses at her, still struggling to shove her newly acquired sailboat through the stiff, waterlogged sand into the frigid ocean. "Like hell I will! My ancestor was the best pirate in the history of Alternia. Sailing is in my blood!"

"Sailing isn't a genetic reflex," Terezi says, still sitting cross-legged on a jagged gray boulder, practically drowning in an oversized teal jacket. Spray kisses her bright red sneakers every time a wave rolls in but she doesn't seem to care.

"It is so and I'll prove it!" Vriska insists, shoving harder. Boats float -- shouldn't that mean they're light? But this stupid wreck is so heavy, absolutely the heaviest thing she's ever tried to move, and that includes all the rocks and branches and corpses she's hauled out of or into her lusus's web over the sweeps.

 _Finally_ the damn thing gets just far out enough that when the next wave surges around Vriska's legs, soaking her jeans up to the knees, it lifts free of the sand for two vital seconds. She gives one last push -- the sticky-down metal plate near the back end scrapes an ever-shallower line as the boat's body rises -- the mast sways straight up instead of canting sideways at a sixty degree angle -- and Vriska shakes her fists at the sky.

"Yeeeeeeeessssssss!!!!!!!!"

Then she scrambles to catch her sailboat before the retreating wave can steal it away.

On her rock, Terezi is cackling like a madwoman. "You should have saved the scumhead you got this from, at least until he showed you how to use it!" she shouts. "You can't learn to sail from your ancestor's journal -- she only talked about romance and religion, not about how her boat worked!"

"How did you know that? Did you read the whole thing when I wasn't looking?" Vriska demands, suddenly tense for no reason she understands. So her ancestor killed Terezi's ancestor. That doesn't actually matter, right? Even if they've taken their ancestors' names and outfits for their Flarp personas, they're not doomed to repeat _all_ of the past. Just like Tavros isn't ever going to kill her, even if she finally manages to make him stop acting like a pathetic loser.

"I didn't need to. You just told me," Terezi says. She favors Vriska with the brilliant sharktooth smile that's the last thing so many of their opponents see before Vriska knocks them unconscious and takes them home for spidermom's dinner.

Vriska can't decide whether to be impressed or annoyed that Terezi can manipulate her so well. She settles for tossing her hair. "It doesn't matter! How hard can it be? The wind's coming from that way, so I pull the ropes to swing the sail perpendicular and catch it. Simple!"

Terezi shakes her head in mock sorrow. "You can lead a grub to sopor but you can't make it sleep."

"Oh yeah? Watch me!" Vriska says, and places her hands on the boat. It's mostly flat and seamless, with a small cavity behind the sail just large enough for three people to sit, or two people and some basic weapons. If she learns to sail -- if Terezi will get off her stupid butt and _help_ \-- then they can move into oceanic Flarp campaigns as well as landlocked ones. Maybe her lusus can't tell the difference between seadwellers and normal trolls, but the gillfaces have the best loot.

The boat lurches under Vriska's weight -- front-to-back and a weird, dipping sideways roll at the same time -- and she tumbles awkwardly into the cavity, nearly banging her horns on the flat metal bar that holds the bottom edge of the triangular sail. She lies facedown for a minute, catching her breath and waiting for her knees and elbows to stop hurting.

Terezi is laughing at her again.

Vriska sits up, a new burst of determination pushing her sore joints and freezing feet into the background. Okay. She can do this. How tricky can two ropes and a piece of cloth even be? This rope pulls the sail that way, so the other rope pulls it the opposite direction. See, Terezi? It's totally logical. Any idiot could figure it out, to say nothing of a genius with the luck of a born pirate!

A gust of wind lifts her hair from her back and the metal bar slams across the boat, pulling the rope through Vriska's hand so fast it rips her fingers raw.

She doesn't duck in time.

The next thing she's aware of is pain -- burning hands, aching shoulders, screaming lungs -- and somebody's arms around her waist, holding her upright and pulling her steadily through the hungry, frigid waves.

"Are you awake now?" Terezi asks, her voice weirdly calm and even.

Vriska turns her hands palm-up and blinks at the blood leaking into the water in messy blue swirls. The salt stings in her torn flesh. "Fuck," she tries to say. It comes out more like 'fthuh'.

"This is when I would say 'I told you so,'" Terezi informs her as Vriska remembers that she has feet and tries to plant them onto solid sand. She can't reach any. She hadn't realized the sailboat had drifted so far out.

Vriska swallows and says, "Yeah, yeah, I know." The words are more intelligible this time.

"Then I won't say it," Terezi says. Which is stupid like her legal technicalities always are -- just because she's not officially saying it doesn't mean she didn't already rub it in -- but Vriska is more interested in the sand she just touched with the tip of her sneaker. She wants to flop down on the beach and sleep for a perigee. Holy _shit_ , her back hurts. And her throat, like she tried to breathe water and some of it's still stuck in her chest.

When Terezi finally drags her out of the surf and lets go of her waist, Vriska drops to her knees in the dark sand, bends over, and coughs until her lunch rushes up in a too-watery flood.

"Fuck," she says again, low and hoarse. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck_."

Terezi doesn't say anything. Vriska turns her head, then regrets the motion and shuffles on her knees until she's facing out to sea. Terezi is swimming toward Vriska's escaping sailboat, a swift, economical overhand stroke that slices neatly through each rise and fall of the waves. After a minute she catches the rope attached to the pointy front end and begins the journey back to shore. That takes longer.

Vriska gargles seawater and spits, trying to get the taste of vomit out of her mouth. Then she shuffles a bit away from that spot and sticks her hands into the crest of a wave. It burns, both the salt and the tug on half-torn flaps of skin, but it gets the sand out of the wounds. Then she does flop down -- very carefully -- and waits for Terezi to come drip on her.

Terezi obliges. Vriska blinks furiously when a bit of seaweed falls across her nose, one slimy leaf nearly touching her eye. Which suddenly makes her notice her glasses are gone. Shit. She liked those frames!

"Quit being so melodramatic," Terezi says, crouching down to pick the seaweed off Vriska's face. "We are completely soaked, the wind is rising, and it's the middle of the dark season. If we don't get shelter we'll both die of hypothermia -- which is a stupid, pointless way to die, so I suggest we avoid it."

"Screw you, I'm not getting up," Vriska says, flapping her bloody hands in Terezi's general direction. The gesture pulls painfully at her shoulders.

Terezi sighs. The she stands and trudges barefoot out of Vriska's sight, a slim line of black clothes and gray skin nearly lost against gray sand and black sky.

Vriska lies defiantly unmoving, though now that Terezi's drawn her attention to the wind and her waterlogged clothes, she can't quite stop a slow series of full-body shivers. Maybe she should have waited for dim season to challenge the ocean. The water would still be cold, but at least the wind and sand would be warmer. She closes her eyes, imagining herself maneuvering a boat across the waves, moonlight and auroras waking rainbows in the spray. Or even better, standing on the deck of a real ship, ordering the crew to sail it for her while she aims a canon at her helpless prey.

"Sit up," Terezi says.

Vriska opens her eyes. Terezi is carrying her oversized teal jacket folded over one arm like a blanket. She's also put her shoes and socks back on, and she uses the steel toe in her sneaker to prod Vriska's ribs in a meaningful way.

Vriska sits up.

Terezi sits down beside her and slings the jacket over them both.

It doesn't really stretch far enough -- it may be too big for Terezi, but it's nowhere near big enough to cover two trolls, even if one is skinny as a coat hanger and they jam as tightly together as they can, thigh pressed against thigh. It's still ages better than nothing. Vriska shoves her right hand into the pocket and pulls the fabric as far forward as she can.

Up close, she can see the embroidered blue lines that march over the quilted teal fabric like stylized spiderwebs.

"I was talking to Aradia yesternight," Terezi says, looking out over the ocean instead of sideways at Vriska. "She said she and Tavros met a seadweller girl by his hive when they were practicing for our last campaign, and they've exchanged Trollian handles. Maybe we should ask her for some advice on boats."

"Ask a seadweller to teach us how to take down other seadwellers? How stupid can you _get?_ " Vriska scoffs.

Terezi shrugs; the motion ripples through the fabric of the jacket. "Okay. But next time, I'm going to research sailing online and you're going to do what I tell you, at least until I'm sure you won't drown yourself again."

"Oh, fuck you, I can look stuff up online as well as you can!" Vriska says. "It's my boat so I'm obviously the captain and you have to follow _my_ orders. You can be navigator or weapons officer, I guess," she adds. They're partners, after all, and while Vriska has all the luck, it's true that Terezi's brain means she doesn't have to wing her hunts nearly as often. Which means her lusus stays well-fed and life is... it's simpler, that's all.

"If you can look things up, why didn't you do that already?" Terezi asks in the terribly reasonable tone of voice that Vriska recognizes, just a bit too late, means she's walked straight into a trap.

"Because!" she snaps, lashing back anyway.

"That lack of foresight is why you are too irresponsible to be the captain," Terezi says with the air of a legislacerator delivering a clinching argument before the court. "I hereby declare mutiny! Henceforth I will be captain and you will be weapons officer." She finally turns toward Vriska, smiling her sharktooth smile but with the softer crinkling around her eyes that means she's on Vriska's side -- an ally, not an enemy.

"Your dice are better suited as distance weapons in any case," Terezi adds. "Really this will be the best division of labor."

"It's still my boat!" Vriska says. Terezi is silent, her body slowly warming against Vriska's own despite their sodden clothes and the changeable gusts of wind. Vriska tugs the teal jacket a bit tighter over her shoulder and growls under her breath. Terezi still says nothing.

"Okay, fine, we'll trade being captain. You can even go first. But I get to be captain again after that!"

"See, that wasn't so hard," Terezi says, laughter dancing in her eyes.

Vriska untucks her hand from the pocket of Terezi's stupid oversized jacket and punches her best friend in the ribs. Then she curses because her shoulders suddenly remember they want to declare mutiny and her hand cracks open and starts to bleed again, but somehow she doesn't mind. Terezi is poking at her palm with careless claws, the teal jacket is still too small to really keep either of them warm, Vriska has literally nothing in her sylladex because she'd emptied it to make room for the sailboat she still doesn't know how to use correctly, and this is objectively the most embarrassing, pathetic, vulnerable situation she's been in since the first time she had to hunt dinner for her lusus.

Vriska steals the jacket as it falls from Terezi's shoulders and refuses to give it back.

This is the best night she's had all sweep.


End file.
